Jennifer Harlow

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Jennifer Harlow and I’m an animator at DreamWorks Animation SKG, where I’m currently working on “The Croods” which is due out March 2013.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Prior jobs have included working at Subway with the job title of “Sandwich Artist”—a fancy name for the not-so fancy job of making the customer’s order. I was also an assistant manager on Sundays, so I kept the business running from 6 a.m. until almost 9 at night when the other manager would take over. I also worked for 2 years at Target as a cashier, but I also spent time in the photo lab and behind the customer service desk. I have a lot of wild stories from my time there, ranging from encountering a homeless woman who was convinced Target employees like myself were stealing her freshly purchased toilet paper, the chaos that is Black Friday, to random strangers pulling my curly ringlet-like hair because they thought I was wearing a wig. A slightly crazier job was during the summer after my second year at CalArts, while staying at my home in Oregon I worked as a freelance caricature artist and this led to one memorable event where I was hired for a wedding. Nothing stranger than drawing tons of already self-conscious strangers for about 4 hours. Everything went very well though, the crowd was extremely nice, and I had a fun time—though I made it a point to make the caricatures a little more flattering than my usual style.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
It’s still pretty early on in my career to be able to state a specific project. I’m really enjoying working on my first feature project, “The Croods.” It’s been a really wonderful experience, and the crew is very supportive and awesome. But I’m proud of everything I accomplished during my time at CalArts and while my students films are less than perfect, I’m glad I have them. They were each a huge learning experience.

 

How did you become interested in animation?
I always drew as a kid, even before I can really remember, my Mom likes to tell this story about how she found me in the living room drawing with a big red crayon on Continue reading

Andrew Kaiko

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Andrew Kaiko.  I am a creative developer at an advertising agency on internet content in Manhattan, New York.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
My jobs before animation were pretty tame.  So the only thing that comes to mind is when I had to not only sort and prepare illustrators’ promotional packages for their clients at an illustrator agency, but take care of the boss, who was an old lady, and her home, where she ran her agency out of.  I replaced light bulbs and emptied water from the air conditioner all the time. One time she actually booked me with the task of getting myself ice cream, as a break!

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
‘Kappa Mikey’  was the first show I worked on at Animation Collective and was also the first show I ever had credit on, and you can’t very well forget something like that!  Not a week went by after getting my bachelor’s certificate, I got a phone call to go into the city for an interview there, and they gave me an offer right then.  This led to animating any anime-esque character who happened to appear in the shot (95% of the cast), and that meant six principle characters, various background extras, and occasional effects and props.  This never happens- I couldn’t believe my luck!  It had a superb cast of voice actors, which turned out to be the best thing about it.  The show isn’t liked by all, and yes, I am familiar with all the complaints, but I loved every second of production.  No other show since, even the shows following it at Animation Collective, was as enjoyable as this one, and that is true even into 2012.

 


How did you become interested in animation?
I’ve been interested in animation my whole life.  I think my parents gave me a gift as well as a curse when Continue reading

“The Old New World” by Alexey Zakharov

“The Old New World” is an amazingly detailed photo-based animation project that brings alive turn of the century photos by photographer and animator Alexey Zakharov of Moscow, Russia. Zakharov found old photos of US cities from the early 1900s and brought them to life.

There are clearly some issues with the added animation such as at 1:47 where the man isn’t even holding the box in his hands. not sure how that got though but nevertheless if you don’t scrutinize too hand it’s a pretty cool little project!
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It’s a travel back in time with a little steampunk time machine.
The main part of this video was made with Camera projection based on photos.
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Source photos by shorpy.com
Music: Al Bowlly – “Guilty”
Still frames and illustrations: behance.net/gallery/35310703/The-Old-New-World-Photo-based-animation-project

 

The photos show New York, Boston, Detroit, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore between 1900 and 1940, and were obtained from the website Shorpy.

It’s a “photo-based animation project” that offers a “travel back in time with a little steampunk time machine,” Zakharov says. “The main part of this video was made with camera projection based on photos.”

Mike Nguyen

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What is your name and your current occupation?

My name is Mike Nguyen. My main focus (have been for quite some time now) is directing an indie hand-drawn feature entitle- ‘My Little WORLD’. I also recently became a faculty member at Kaywon School of Art and Design in Korea, sharing thoughts in animated filmmaking for 1 year.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Tough one… the crazier jobs had been dishwashing, restaurant part time jobs during high school days…, (not too exciting here).

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I’ve been through many films including Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’… but the only one I’m truly proud to be part of is- Brad Bird’s ‘The Iron Giant’ (where I was supervising animator).

How did you become interested in animation?
I’ve always been fascinated with the cinema and have desires to make things move ever since I was little. In 8th grade I was first introduced to Continue reading

Mark Simon


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What is your name and your current occupation?
Mark Simon, Producer, director, story artist. I currently own 3 businesses: Animatics & Storyboards, Inc. (www.Storyboards-East.com) A&S Animation, Inc (www.FunnyToons.tv) Sell Your TV Concept Now, Inc (www.SellYourTvConceptNow.com) Currently boarding commercials, directing animated pilots and working on WB’s Hong Kong Phooey feature. Produced the animation on Fox’s Tooth Fairy 2 with Larry the Cable Guy which was just released on DVD.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I’ve worked in Hollywood since I graduated college. I started off in live-action and still work a lot in live action.
Before that I designed and built my own line of skateboards for Schwinn when I was 12. I published a magazine in college called The Belligerent Beacon. I had a syndicated comic strip called Hollyweird, a parody of Hollywood with animals as the characters which is currently on www.sunnyfundays.com.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
seaQuest DSV with Spielberg was awesome. Biggest show on TV. Spielberg. Awesome food all day. Spielberg. Sci-fi. Spielberg. Did I mention Spielberg?  My series Timmy’s Lessons In Nature is always one of my favorites. That’s the one we won the first Grand Prize in the Nicktoons Film Festival and it also appeared in Spike & Mike’s Sick & Twisted and with Happy Tree Friends & Friends. I love that Timmy is too stupid to talk or to understand pain. Now that’s dumb. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN3hp9QthQI
I’m also partial to anything I’m currently working on. I get totally stoked working out story elements and creating new projects.

How did you become interested in animation?
Loved it since I was a kid, like most of us. I was doing little animations at home. My dad found a studio in Houston and set up for them to show me around their studio. We took measurements from their discs and built our own Continue reading

Brent J. Zorich

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Brent J. Zorich and I am the Chief Technology Officer of BRENT ZORICH PRODUCTIONS, LLC.What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
One summer during industrial design school in the 90s at Ohio State I worked as a bouncer at a dueling piano bar named Howl at The Moon. I didn’t realize it when I took the summer gig, but occasionally throughout the night the staff had to get on stage and dance to songs from Grease… ah, the memories.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I played MADDEN growing up so getting to be a lead rigger on that was pretty rewarding. Seeing my name in Star Wars credits was really rewarding also. I loved sitting in dailies critiquing shots on TRANSFORMERS REVENGE OF THE FALLEN. My favorite intellectual property is actually HARRY POTTER; at Lucasfilm Animation Singapore I was in charge of arranging sequences for monthlies in addition to my regular tasks. The monthlies that I arranged were for HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE and I got to work with the raw footage of Daniel Radcliff and see the before and after… really fun. The music I used in the backdrop when I showed to sequence to the all staff was Eulogy by Tool. I remember being at Lucasfilm in San Francisco and opening up a script for Indiana Jones written by Steven Spielberg and realizing I made it! I loved going through executive training at Lucasfilm, it was a weeklong through the executive trainer, Larry Seal, and I was being prepped to run a studio. I also enjoyed being on the Lucasfilm Best Practices Steering Committee that set the direction for all digital assets in regards to Lucasfilm Animation, LucasArts, and Industrial Light and Magic. There were about ten of us on the committee.  But, I’d have to say the most rewarding experience was in Lucasfilm Animation Singapore and my film game convergence group that I was in took the television version of Ahsoka Tanu, Anakin Skywalker’s Padawan, and I modified it so it would work in the Unreal Engine. We showed it directly to George Lucas when he came to see the studio in summer of 2008 and he couldn’t tell the difference between my Ahsoka rendering on the XBOX 360 and the version used on television.

How did you become interested in animation?
Three years old in summer of 1977, “A long time ago in a galaxy, far, far, away….” You’ll figure it out.

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I am from Columbus, Ohio and I got into the animation business by Continue reading